In the time of Web 2.0 and ‘digital native’ students, school needs to change: perhaps it is time to shift from ‘teaching the IT’ – or ‘WITH the IT’ – to ‘teaching IN the IT’ The school’s make over could be realized through its immersion into digitalism. Then, what can teachers do and how?

2. Web 2.0 Tools Some terms quickly get into common usage. That was the case of ‘Web 2.0’ (O’Reilly, 2005) and ‘digital natives’ (Prenskym, 2001), two sayings which synthetically represent epoch-making phenomena. In first place, the web was thought as an instrument to visualize static hyper-textual files (created with use of HTML). This kind of approach could be defined as Web 1.0. Then, Internet evolved into dynamic interfaces (such as forums and blogs). The Web 2.0 is totally equivalent to the Web 1.0, from a strictly technologic point of view, , as the web infrastructure keeps on being made of TCP/IP and HTTP protocols and the hyper-text remains the basic concept of links among contents. The difference consists basically in the approach that users have towards the Web, which shifts from simple visualization – supported, though, by tools effective to research, selection and connection – to an actual contribution to the development and growth of the Web with their own contents. The Web 2.0 remarks a deep change in the Internet. To average users, ‘Web 1.0’ used to be a collection of products made by others and the navigation used to be something comparable to the TV ‘zapping’. The 2.0 dimension enhances the social dimension of the Internet at its most. Everybody can interact with each other and take part to the production of contents. Blogs, websites for sharing videos, photos, presentations, and libraries – Youtube, Flickr, SlideShare, Anobii – allow anyone to produce contents and share, comment, tag, download, modify and embed those in a blog. The wikis – Wikipedia is just the most popular one – allow a collective elaboration and collaboration in the diffusion of knowledge. Most of all, the Web 2.0 is a philosophical approach to the net, it represents its social character of sharing and being author rather than merely use. Although many web tools could seem unchanged from a technological point of view – think about forums, blogs, and chats, which existed before, in the Web 1.0 –,this kind of use itself created new scenarios, based on the coexistence of the possibility to use and to create/modify the multimedia. The possibility to access low-cost services, allowing beginners to edit contents, too, represents an important step towards real interaction and sharing, in which the central role belongs to the users themselves. Before, the development of a personal website required for HTML and programming skills. Nowadays, blogs allow everybody to publish their contents in a powerful graphic look, without a specific technological education. If before web communities were made mostly by computer experts, today the situation is completely different. The main blog producers are teenagers, writers, journalists, artists, - 3 - “Yes Employability” Pedagogival Orientations for an Adequate Training Towards Europe Teach In Europe

students, whose activities do not require strong IT skills. The Web 2.0 is characterized, besides than by the sharing contents online, by immediate publication of the material, along with its classification and indexing in the search engines, so that the information is right available for the community. This way, the life cycle of the content management has been completed quickly. It is not just about new opportunities offered by the XML, it is also a brand new culture: harnessing/ harvesting/ making the most out of the collective intelligence. Google Translate is an example among thousands. It allows comparing, statement by statement, the translation with its original version, and gathering the users’ feedbacks (‘suggest a better translation’). The ‘digital native’ term remarks a whole generation – also defined ‘net generation’ or ‘screen generation’ – that grew up surrounded by digital technologies: CD-ROM, DVD, iPod, mobiles, digital photos and videos, chats, e-mails, the Web – and into that, websites such as MySpace and Youtube, blogs and sites for sharing music and movies. This generation wrote the first words either with a pen or with a keyboard, gives for granted immediate access to any kind of information and person, is used to search for– and find – the needed resources online, is familiar with the peer-to-peer, the free sharing and plays in a multitasking modality. This generation chats on MSN while downloading music on e-Mule and watching a video on YouTube with MP3 headphones on. Shortly: ‘Medias and ICT … are the culture through which the young live, build and share meanings today’ (Ardizzone & Rivoltella, 2008). With this kind of students and in the 2.0 era, can teachers hold on to the format of the 20th Century School? Antonio Campani suggested a changing line in his ‘invited report’ of Didamatica 2008, ‘Digital skills at school: how to assess them?’ School taught about the IT, taught WITH the IT, now it needs to aim towards the teaching IN the IT. They have been teaching ABOUT a technique and WITH a technique, since its invention, through writing, until printing and photography. The more a technology was developed and spread, the more teachers and students were into it, the more you could say that the teaching occurred IN it. As far as Digital Technologies are concerned, for the moment we must stay tight to the concepts of teaching ‘about’ and teaching ‘with’. Teaching about technology means to provide technical competencies, on the one hand, and to educate to awareness in the use, on the other hand. Teaching with technology can be useful both as far as the motivation is concerned and on the side of efficiency improvement (target orientation) and teaching efficacy (ratio result/energies investment). Several students are more confident with a PC rather than with pen and paper or chalk and blackboard. They think it is more up-to-date, more fun. Then, a certain - 4 - “Yes Employability” Pedagogival Orientations for an Adequate Training Towards Europe Teach In Europe

activity, as elaborating a conceptual map or making a summary, can result more fascinating if carried out with a PC. A lecture with the interactive board, rather than the traditional one, can draw more attention. Anyway, the use of the PC and – why not – of the videophone can be motivating, most of all for the difference these tools offer compared to the traditional lectures with blackboard and bloc notes. Besides, students could learn the importance and potentialities of these instruments besides the range of socialization, rather from the perspective of employment and the use that companies make of it (e.g., the virtual enquiry about the candidate prior to an interview is part of the information research characterizing the ‘digital reputation’). Doing researches on line – maybe as webquests – means having much more information at disposal, compared to a paper encyclopaedia, and, above all, in various formats: not only texts and images, but also audios and videos. Preparing a lecture using Powerpoint or Impress of OpenOffice, is something different than just thinking about a verbal presentation. Studying the parabola with a manipulation of graphics created by Geogebra (Berengo & Terenghi , 2007), is not the same as studying it on the book or drawing it on a piece of paper, as far as the ‘learning by doing’ process is concerned. If English as a foreign language provides understanding exercises along with a self-assessment comprehension test and the aid of audio equipment, studying it becomes much more interesting The motivation is related to the improvement of efficacy and efficiency. Interactive exercises and self-assessment tests aid the learning process. The interactive board allows using what was already done in the previous lesson or in another class without losing time in creating ex novo. The educational resources provided on the school website allow saving time and money for copies and, most of all, ensure the students to be able to get them when they need to. If the students are provided with explanations, presentations, exercises, links to videos and tests, they will probably be more prepared at the exam. Some teachers use forums, blogs, courses made with Moodle or with another LMS, so they use a working environment on the web as an extension – with no temporal or space limits – of their class. So, digital technologies become means of change for the school. There is a shift:  From the central role of the teacher to the central role of the learning subject;  From the teaching to the learning;  From the spreading of knowledge in a behavioural or cognitive format to the elaboration of knowledge in a constructive or connective format;  From a hierarchic system (teacher-students) to a net-like one, in which it is enhanced the equal contribution of each subject to the learning; - 5 - “Yes Employability” Pedagogival Orientations for an Adequate Training Towards Europe Teach In Europe

 From a systematic, linear and sequential order and the long times to the hypermedia disorder and the short times;  From the teacher as spreader/ communicator to the teacher as supporter – not in the sense of making things easier, but in the sense of drawing things out, making them emerge (Ardizzone, 2008) – , promoter of experiences, ‘grown-up’ pushing the enquiring and synthesizing knowledge and experiences;  From the formal education to the contamination with the informal;  From a traditional model to the one that could be defined the ‘school2.0’. - 6 - “Yes Employability” Pedagogival Orientations for an Adequate Training Towards Europe Teach In Europe

3. Blogs, Wikis, Forums This is an analysis about the IT tools which would be useful if employed in the range of teaching and education. The first one is the blog, a sort of an online journal. The blog is easy to use, since it does not require specific skills. As a matter of fact, its structure is usually made of a guided editing application allowing the development of web pages, without necessarily knowing the HTML language. This structure can be personalized with graphic formats called ‘templates’, which come in different versions. A blog can be public or private. All posts are generally visualized in a reverse chronological order, which means from the newest to the eldest, and are collected in a database easily accessible. Readers can comment the posts, sometimes after having registered. You can update a blog from any place having an Internet Access Point. Some blogging platforms, such as WordPress, allow posting by e-mail. There are also the so-called ‘moblogs’, which can be accessed and used with a mobile self-phone or a PDA. Physically far away but ideologically close individuals can keep in touch, thanks to the blogs. They can share thoughts and points and view about a wide range of situations, because these are rarely monothematic sites. You are free to express your creativity, interacting directly with other bloggers. The blogger is who writes and administrates a blog, while the whole group of blogs is called ‘blogsphere’. Some blogs can actually be considered personal and/or collective journals, which means that they are used to put on line personal stories and meaningful moments of someone’s life. In such a context, discretion, privacy, and personal life shift towards the collective dimension. Some of the main kinds of current blogs are below mentioned, providing some links as examples – and reserving a specific section in the following pages for the educational ones. Blogs can be of different kinds:  Personal blog: it is the most popular. The owner writes about several matters: daily experiences, poetry, stories, literature, art, desires, inconveniencies and complaints, travels, and much more, interacting with readers through comments.  Actuality blog: users express their opinion about actuality subjects and news items or simply make considerations about matters of social interest or comment news read on the newspapers or websites. - 7 - “Yes Employability” Pedagogival Orientations for an Adequate Training Towards Europe Teach In Europe

 Thematic blog: it is given to themes in which the administrator has a specific expertise.  Other kinds of blog: photoblogs, webrooms, politics blogs, urban blogs, watch blogs, m-blogs, provlogs, video blogs, audio blogs, nanopublishing, moblogs, multiblogging, blog novels or blog fictions, about which Wikipedia provides information.  Educational blogs: they can be at the service of education and learning.

This is an alternative tool, based on interaction, which among its benefits accounts a certain gratification for students, coming from the publishing of essays of a personal nature or created in team. Students are more actively taking part in the class’ activities, getting to self-organize in small groups to keep a track of what is going on during class. This track can be partially reworked at home or school, it can be written down on the pc, embellished with images and explanatory graphics, and then it can be collectively discussed in class so to improve on it, if necessary. Only at this point the resources provided can be published on the blog. Also students from other classes can interact and exchange opinions, commenting the resources posted online. External visitors commenting what has been published is not uncommon, creating so a network of relationships in which knowledge is dynamically ‘handled’. Ideally, the blog catalyzes the interest and enhances the motivation in creating something, and it can go beyond the class itself, widening so the circle. It encourages the arousal of the kids’ natural curiosity with amazing results as far as the development of specific skills is concerned, such as, for instance, the planning of a project regarding contents editing and the graphics related to that. Then, it surely improves also the problem posing and problem solving skills, since students are often called to solve problems connected to the creation of texts to be posted. It also enhances the ability to take notes during class and the team-working process, as the students are united by a common goal that is not abstract, rather concrete. So we assist to a general improvement of all basic skills, because students are more careful to what they do, since they clearly have in mind a gratifying purpose. Besides, mutual support among equals is enhanced, and this causes the improvement of the network of relationships developed in the class. Unfortunately, time is the variable which must be faced, both in the real and the virtual approach to the educational and learning matters. An accurate planning is necessary, making target-oriented choices and optimizing the educational curricula, often redundant in the contents, cutting off some parts poorly important and turning others into fertile grounds for interdisciplinary activities. - 8 -